Inside information led to shootout at Laden’s Pak fortress
May 2nd, 2011 - 1:55 pm ICT by ANI
Washington, May 2(ANI): The operation to find and kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden began in earnest when the CIA learned that the world’s most wanted terrorist was in a specific compound in Pakistan, US officials have revealed.
US President Barack Obama had ordered the raid by a small team of US special forces, which found Laden, who had evaded capture for a decade, in a home on a fortified compound in Abbottabad city, located 50 kilometres northeast of Islamabad and 150 kilometres east of Peshawar, Pakistan.
The officials say inside information was key to the successful operation.
They also said that CIA had been trying to gain the confidence of people close to Laden, and terror detainees “flagged to us people who were providing direct support” to the Al-Qaeda boss.
A lone courier in particular, an associate of other senior Al-Qaeda members, proved crucial in the end, CBS News reports.
“We identified areas where this courier and his brother operated, but they had extensive operational security,” said the official - and those elaborate security procedures made the U.S. even more suspicious of whom they were catering to.
The officials also claimed that Laden’s residence was identified in August 2010 in Abbottabad, an affluent area home to many retired military officers.
They said that American agents were “shocked by what we saw” at the compound, calling it an “extraordinary” complex many times larger than the other homes in the neighborhood, surrounded by an eight-foot high, barbed wire-topped wall.
The lavish home had a terrace on the third floor, surrounded by its own seven-foot high privacy wall. (ANI)
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